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Thursday, August 31, 2017

Repost: Menashe (opens September 1st at the Nightlight Cinema)

[MENASHE opens in Akron on Friday September 1st exclusively at The Nightlight Cinema.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Joshua Weinstein didn't have an easy time making his movie MENASHE.
The filmmaker drew his cast of nonprofessional actors from members of
the Hasidic Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Many had never
even seen a movie before. Some signed on and then dropped out, fearing
the disapproval of their synagogues and their children's schools.

Weinstein
doesn't speak Yiddish, the language in which the film was made, so he
had an on-set translator who read the lines to him in English. He stood
far away from the actors, directing them through earpieces, in order not
to attract attention in the cloistered enclave, which takes a skeptical
view of modernity. Financing came sporadically, and the movie took
nearly two years to complete.

A cinematographer who has worked on documentary films in foreign locations, Weinstein told the L.A. Times he
wanted to tell a human story in his own backyard. The film, a low-key
drama about a Hasidic widower trying to regain custody of his
pre-adolescent son, is a small gem. Weinstein was fortunate in finding
as his star the talented Menashe Lustig, 38, a member of the Skver sect,
who had created some YouTube comedy videos and was not averse to acting
in the film. The movie's story is based loosely on Lustig's own
experience as a widower who temporarily lost custody of his young son.

The
movie's Menashe is a stout, jovial but hapless man who works as a
grocery store cashier for a disapproving manager who constantly chides
him for failing to mop the floors. His wife, Leah, died a year ago, and
his brother-in-law Eizik and his wife have taken custody of Menashe's
son, Rieven (Ruben Nyborg). Jewish law, as interpreted by their rabbi,
requires that the boy be raised in a two-parent home. Menashe is not
only single, but he is in no hurry to remarry, regularly rejecting
arranged matches.

Rieven is well cared for in his
uncle's home, but Menashe deeply misses his son. One day he picks him up
on his way to see his tutor and gives him a special present — a newborn
chick. He amuses the boy by singing him a little song about the chikele who will grow up to be chicken soup. Father and son have a sweet, easy rapport, and we feel the sad injustice of the situation.

Eizik,
the solemn, bearded brother-in-law, strongly disapproves of Menashe,
who was no help during Leah's final illness, owes him money, and is a shlemazel — an
unlucky person, someone to whom bad things happen. Menashe is behind on
his rent, he destroys boxes of groceries while making deliveries, and
burns a kugel he has decided to cook for a memorial gathering for
his wife. (“Even a bear can learn to dance,” says the neighbor woman
who gives him the recipe — like everything else, the aphorism sounds
better in Yiddish.)

When Menashe, aching for his son,
insists on taking Rieven to live with him, he oversleeps and has nothing
for the kid's breakfast but cake and soda pop. While he loves his
father, Rieven misses the stability of his uncle's home; at one point
calls Eizik to come retrieve him.

The movie is filled with the details of Menashe's daily life – putting on his tzitzit (ritual
fringes), praying before bed, ritually washing his hands, joining his
fellow Hasids in an evening of boisterous song, drink and laughter. Such
scenes beautifully illustrate the joyousness in worship that is central
to Hasidism.

There is also, as is characteristic in
the Jewish world, a lot of philosophizing and arguing, about religious
law, and about what's right, what's fair. Also, a lot of complaining.
Menashe's manager calls him “an extremist” because he refuses to sell
unwashed lettuce that would not get the approval of “The Ruv,” Menashe's
rabbi. The children of a man named Yankel's have been expelled from
religious school because their father didn't properly observe the
Sabbath. Rievele asks Menashe why he doesn't wear a hat and coat like
his uncle, and other religious Jewish men, do. A man complains because
his wife insists they move house every year to accommodate their growing
family. A woman grocery customer complains wearily to Menashe about her
large brood — “Big family, big problems” (“groys mishpocheh, groys tsuris”)
.
You
may have gathered that I take particular pleasure in the Yiddish
language. It was my mother's native tongue, and became in my childhood a
secret code she shared only with me. Like many second-generation Jews,
my parents used it mostly for things they didn't want the kids to hear. I
took pains to memorize some Yiddish, but mostly the idiosyncratic
curses, like my favorite, which translates to “You should grow like an
onion, with your head in the ground.” Menashe brought back to me
words and phrases I had not heard in many years: someone says, “Why are
you knocking a teapot?” The Yiddish phrase is hak a tchynik, talking nonsense or rattling on, like a boiling teakettle.

Even for those without an interest in Yiddish,MENASHEis
that rarest of things: a small ethnic film that, unlike its maladroit
hero, never puts a foot wrong. The acting is very naturalistic,
impressive considering the performers' inexperience. Weinstein's
screenplay feels authentic and lived, because of his nonfiction-film
background and the script's incorporation of true stories. The story is
authentic, moving, and blessedly free of easy pathos and unrealistically
tidy solutions. 4 out of 4 stars.